weekend revelations
| <<-- : 09.10.03 : -->> |
2:32 p.m.it's wednesday already and i haven't even talked about my weekend. i had planned on it not being an eventful weekend. but it just turned out that way i guess.
friday night, i went over to Que Sera for 'club moustache.' i was to meet up with friends from long beach and party with them for a bit. my ear was okay, it was still clogged, but i was feeling better. i had a couple beers, but it just felt really weird there. i don't seem to be as close to any of them as i was before. i really felt out of place. maybe it was because i didn't have a trucker hat or something. but i was feeling really uncomfortable. so i had said that my ear was bothering me and left.
i called up a friend who had invited me to hang out next week to see if he wanted to hang out that night, and he called me back right away and invited me over. the thing was that he's a manager for one of the clubs in west hollywood. and he wouldn't be out until 230 in the morning. so he invited me over to the club to hang out with him while he worked and then afterwards we would hang out a bit. so he gave them my name at the door and i got in with no cover. he ended up running around all night, so he gave me some drink cards, and i just people watched all night. i danced a little and it was fun. but it amazed me how much the scene doesn't really change too much. the music was pretty much the same. but i was a little more comfortable in a room full of strangers. it's strange how it's easier to be with people you have no expectations from than to be in a room full of uncertain friendships. i guess i should work on not expecting things from the people close to me, since that's where it really matters.
saturday was spent sleeping all day. i worked on some sales reports and did laundry. it was really nice and relaxing and i had the house to myself. i got a lot done and i went to bed pretty late.
we had to get up early the next day, since my dad was flying in to san diego. he had wanted us to drive down there that day to visit him. my brother took his fiancee so that she could meet him. it was a fairly decent visit. my dad is still my dad, and i think i was able to deal with it this time around since the initial shock of who he really was wore off. i found out lots of wonderful things about my childhood though. lots of the memories i had were actually repressed and twisted around because of somewhat traumatic events.
there was this one story of the first rock i threw. i remember being in pre-school when i lived in japan. my brother was throwing rocks across the street, and i wanted to throw some too. so the first one i thrown was at a passing car. i broke the window and my brother got in trouble for it.
what really happened was that i threw it at a parked car. across the street was our school. the owner of the car had a cop pick us up and bring us to the station on the naval base, where we waited for my dad. the reason why my brother got in trouble for it was because i was at the police station shaking of sheer fright. my dad said i couldn't stop shaking. so they had me lie down until i was calm. but my dad took my brother out to the rock quarry on the base and had him throw rocks til his arm hurt as punishment.
i've always thought i got away with that. but apparently, i repressed the whole police station thing. i must have been really frightened, and i must've pushed that memory far back into my mind. i was told that whenever i was about to do something wrong, my dad would threaten to call the cops on me, or more specifically, the seargent or whoever that was that picked us up. today, i shake everytime i get pulled over. i get really nervous. i know that i'm just getting a ticket or whatever, but i shake really bad. i wonder if it has anything to do with that repressed memory.
another interesting thing i found out about myself was why my family called me by my middle name growing up. when i was a kid, i've always known my name to be bryan. it's what everyone in my family called me. on the first day of first grade, we had to find our desks by finding our names on little name cards. i couldn't find bryan anywhere. but i did find one that said byron. i grabbed it and told my mom that they spelled my name wrong. and then a little black boy said that it was his name and that's his seat. i was confused. i thought i was in the wrong class. we soon found out that they went by my first name, that was on the roster. so it was then and every day after that everyone at school would call me anthony. i don't remember having a hard time getting used to it. but i do remember that i didn't know that was my name until then. byron became my best friend in the first grade.
well that's the story i remember, and to my knowledge, it's all true. unless i've twisted some things around without knowing it. but i remember my mom telling it and that's how it went. but what i didn't know was why my family called me bryan. see, i've always thought that it was because my mom had intended my name to be bryan anthony on my birth certificate, and she had told me the doctors switched the names around accidentally. that might be still true, but my dad told us that he had always been looking forward to calling me tony. that was until we lived in japan. in japan, when i was a toddler, there was this other little boy. he was the son of my parents' friends. and this little boy would run around and cause damage. he would set things on fire and just cause living hell for my mom and dad and everyone who happened to be in his vicinity. this boy's name was tony. so after knowing this kid, my mom swore that she would never call me that name ever, and my dad agreed.
i wonder what kind of impact is that for a child, what a name really means to someone. if i would've been a tony, cuz i really don't feel like one. i am an anthony, but i made me. at home, i was always bryan, and i still am to this day. but outside of home, i am anthony. and everything that makes up anthony is my own seperate world that i have pretty much created for myself. my work environment, school, high school, friends i've made. anthony created his world. bryan still lives at home, he was created by his mother and father and their respected families. anthony is out. bryan is still closeted.
names give power. names give associations. are they just meaningless labels? or are they really powerful tools to shape a person's life?
| <<-- : : -->> | top
cyclists - 04.06.07
reader update - 04.04.07
read me - 03.29.07
easter sunday - 03.26.07
shutdown day - 03.23.07